Recent reviews by SSJ R Simmons

Almost identical to the original, but more fun in VR

Really short, but a great evolution of the "Anomaly Finder" genre, and not everything is obvious, so it keeps you on your toes

Update 12/09/2023: First time playing since Patch 7 released. with crash fixes and performance fixes. The patch corrupted a file and as a result failed to install which didn't become apparent until I'd tried to update the game at least 12 times, validating files and clearing caches in between. Once it did actually update, it performed the same, and crashed within 5 minutes of loading the save. Literally was jumping across platforms and it crashed. Fantastic update there...

Specs for performance comparison:
Ryzen 7 5800x3d
ASUS TUF 4070ti
64GB DDR4 RAM @ 3200MHz
Game loading from SSD
Playing at 1440p, Adaptive Sync, Epic Preset, HDR on, Raytracing off

I preordered the game, so I had no way to know ahead of time how terrible the performance would be on launch. I tried to play it and gave up after less than an hour. I saw the response and decided to wait. Eventually forgot about it due to work and other games.

Just came back to it yesterday and found the performance to be better, but still not brilliant, dipping to high 40s in some specific cases, which is pretty abysmal for my machine, but I can deal with it as it really only matters if there's stuttering, of which there is minimal. There is a bit of shoddy game design in two early bosses in the Rancor and Spawn of Oggdo, where they give very little time to react and their tracking is near perfect, so you need to have near perfect timing, or just do chip damage (especially Oggdo).

The issue is that it's there's more bugs than an ant hill.
- General oddness here and there regarding enemy movements
- Grabbing onto walls that you shouldn't be able to, only to not be able to let go
- Got sent flying across a room once for no reason that I could see
- Random invisible walls in the middle of open fields
- Dodging sometimes having absolutely no effect, and getting hit anyway

But this sort of stuff was kinda just the jank that I've come to expect from EA. What absolutely killed the game for me was two save game breaking bugs.

The first was that for no reason while walking around in the wilderness on the first planet, the game crashed so hard that my PC needed to be hard rebooted. When it finally came back, my save file was corrupted, with apparently no backup available, despite a backup being present in the save folder. I cannot get a clear answer on whether or not the EA app supports cloud saves, which really annoying, because when I first ran the game after having not touched it in months, it asked if I wanted to use my local save or the cloud save? Even if they do exist, there's apparently no way to force them to sync, so that save is gone. And I should point out that this is a known issue in this and one other area, but no fix yet.

The game crashed again, requiring a reboot again, triggered by buying the first skill upgrade during the tutorial so, yeah good. Started again, completed the tutorial and got to the first workbench only to find that my preorder and deluxe content was missing. Found the fix (disable, run, quit, enable, run again), and moved on to the first planet, only to find that the game reset my level ups, priorite pickups, and stims. So I lost resources because the game just decided I did.

So my options are: Continue the game in a nerfed state with who know what other random penalties I didn't notice, or start again for the 4th time in less than 24 hours and hope that the game doesn't screw me over this time, with no way to predict what might happen next.

Thanks EA, you absolute travesty of a company.

I was extremely excited for this game, big fan of the Tony Hawk games back in the day, hundreds of hours into TH2 and Underground, and 100% the TH1+2 remake in like 2 days. Add birds to that and you have a direct line straight to my heart. Followed the kickstarter but couldn't back at the time, so I waited eagerly and bought it as soon as it was available

But honestly, I do not recommend the game in its current state. I do not understand how the devs thought this was ready for sale. At first I was having fun, and was able to laugh at some of the janky physics and silliness. But as soon as you were supposed to be doing anything more complex than simple ollies and flip tricks...if this was labelled as "Early Access" (which at first I thought it was honestly) I could forgive it, even though early access is used as a scapegoat for badly programmed games that the developer never intends to finish.

This game is not finished, don't let the full release status fool you.

The graphics are decent, nothing amazing, but not ugly. It looks like a PS2 game, which I suppose is apt, but I am pretty certain that this was made in Unity, and that engine is capable of more than what we got here, Textures are a bit too low res, shaders feel flat, and lighting is static and uninspired. The models and animations (however few there are) are cute though, low poly and all (never had a problem with them). I love that grab tricks are done with the beak, and I do like that you can dress up your bird. If only the dress up menu had a confirm button, rather than the obtuse resolution of just pressing back to indicate you're done.

The Ui is...fine. It's not terrible, but it's just...bland. Instantly forgettable. Which I realise isn't that big of a deal considering immersion etc., but it isn't clear what's happening sometimes. The HUD will sometimes just disappear when you exit a menu, the HUD gets completely covered up by the mission popup when you skate near it, mission objectives are tracked on the UI first to last even if you do them out of order, things like that. And the control customisation screen is...did they just leave the entire screen as the default Unity UI elements? Why???

The camera is my biggest problem. I don't think I have ever seen or felt a worse camera in a video game. You *can* move it freely, but in this style of game, that's not something you should be doing other than to look around you while stopped to get you bearings. So instead it should follow you, which it does. Too well. It sticks to you so precisely that the slightest movement causes it whip around chaotically, while it tries its best not to clip through anything. Whatever you do, do not go into tight corridors, it can be a nightmare to figure out. Oh wait, the game forces you to do that in at least one mission...and these spots are seemingly everywhere.

The controls are also subpar. The layout is almost identical to the Tony Hawk series, which is good because its the only good control layout other than arguably Skate (which I still personally do not like), but the are REALLY stiff and unresponsive at times, whether wireless or wired on the controller. Some of the functions that the game taught later I just straight up thought weren't in the game at first because they just do not work sometimes, such as transferring, and a lot of functions just result in crashing. Also good luck controlling whether you grind or stall on any given half/quarter pipe. Nine times out of ten I would stall when I wanted to grind. I get that it's probably trying to be more forgiving than Tony Hawk, which was a little too precise with the angle for stalling, but it feels like you need to be going at a 30° to actually grind.

And lastly the presentation is lacklustre. The sounds the birds make are all budgies or similar birds, even when playing as a Galah, Cockatoo, Kookaburra, hawk, etc. There's almost no feedback for doing anything, good or bad. Some actions just feel forced and unnatural (such as transfers). Nothing feels like it has any real weight to it. The game doesn't really explain itself very well either, for example, the fancy metre, I have no idea how it fills, and sometimes it fills partially just by you moving forward after crashing...

I can absolutely see where they were coming from with this, and I genuinely do hope that the controls and camera get fixed at least. But come on devs, you are clearly capable of better than this, what is good about the UI, visuals, etc is really good, just...finish the game before you release it and add more animation.

This game is fairly relaxing and simple, with a unique art style that blends 8 bit sprites with simple low poly models.
That being said, it's likely going to get old fairly quickly. The levels are fairly hit and miss in terms of originality and variety, offering little variation. Most of the time there's very little to do outside of simply dropping objects randomly.

What little variation does exist simply comes in the form of being able to change the specific plant that you place at any given time, though it offers almost no change in how the game functions. Most of the reason to even play the levels comes simply from the fact that doing so results in unlocking objects and plants for the sandbox mode, which is probably the biggest reason to play the game. It's a lot of fun to simply place objects around and create your own scenes.

Over all I feel that this game is worth the price, especially as it's in early access. More content is likely to arise as time goes on, and that will be very welcome.

Bought this in a bundle, so was the equivalent of about $2, honestly I wish I could refund it. 3/10, bad game

I bought the game because I'd heard of it, and it sounded like a novel concept. Kind of a not very subtle Attack On Titan rip off, with orcs rather than naked people. Basic mechanics are fine in concept; save civilians and kill small orcs to charge up a super attack to kill the giant orcs, you can climb really quickly and easily to get higher as needed, and each level has bonus challenges in an attempt to make the levels less samey.

But therein lies the problem, the levels are all basically the same with slightly different bonus challenges. Kill all the orcs, or the giants before the percentage in the top corner runs out, and that's it. Most of the challenges are bland, or not even challenging, such as beat the level within a specified time which is about 3 times what is necessary to do it slowly, or kill a very small number of small orcs.

What should have saved the poor level variety though is the actual gameplay, which could theoretically be quick, tight and visceral, but its not. You move quickly, but with very floaty controls, especially when trying to climb on the on the buildings - but not the scenery apparently - and combat against the small orcs is either mashing a single button, or holding an auto kill button and pointing at the one you want to die. You save a few cardboard cutouts that pretend to be people by simply holding a button at a crystal for a while, then run at the giants.

Fighting the giants consists of using a single button to point at their armour to cut it off, and then pressing the same button to cut off the limb the armour was protecting, and if they are wearing heavy armour it takes longer, because you need to hit a specific point twice to actually cut the armour. Rinse and repeat until their neck is exposed and cut their head off. This is very tedious as they can barely hit you due to your movement speed somewhere in the realm of the Doom Guy on a galon of RedBull, and if they somehow catch you right where they are going to swing, 90% of the time you won't dodge their attacks as the area the attacks cover are very wide, and will likely hit and kill you no matter which direction you dodge.

If it had tighter control, even slightly more complex combat, and more variety in level design it may have been good. The concept unfortunately fits a larger scale battle scenario than what is presented, such as that of a Warriors or Musou style game. The game just feels very devoid of life, which may sound like a plus for a game called Extinction, but unfortunately it just feels like a bunch of prop buildings on a weirdly clean movie set, with unpaid extras for most of the cast, and an amature stunt man as the main character.

Probably the best VR game to date. Great concept, great feel, great visuals

Anuerysm inducing

10/10